What does battery % mean when under load?

Yes its safe to switch to GT after the ECO downshift as you indicated. Just note that the hill that the board was just on caused it to downshift, so keep that in mind, and also that your battery voltage is dropping. But if you're on straights you are fine. You can see the battery percentage climb, its dumb and not accurate, but its a gauge. Look at how it climes up and the rate it climbs up when you put on regen brakes going down a hill. And if you stopped and have some time, take a glance at what the raw voltage reads. Know and understand what that number means.

Just be cautious and aware on this board and know where you are such as your battery percentage. On my last ride I had some steep hills at 55% with the AT wheels on, it dove down to the lower to mid 20's with the battery percent, never dropped into ECO, but then when I was on flats I put it back into GT, battery rose up to high 40's. I watched it some more and when I reached 30% on the flats I put it down to ECO, shifting to FAST when I needed and didn't use GT. You have to find what works for you and where you feel safe. Its a board that has some quarks to say the least, but once you understand them, you'll be able to ride the board better, safer, and have more fun with it as well.

I honesty believe not for safety but rather by poor design, we already see how they're reading the very unreliable volt meter of the pack. My guess is that when on a hill or hard acceleration they don't want to drive the pack into a critical level where the battery cuts out to protect itself. If they monitored the battery better, like most EV skateboard companies do, they can drive the battery down low without worry of exhibiting damage to it, and should at minimum get down to 8-10% SOC before taking any action.

 

I ride in hills and i'm over 200#. The demands spikes of torque. I can ride up any hill around here when full, but at 50%, i start falling into ECO mode on some of them. I take that into consideration when I ride. On street wheels, its almost never a problem.. but I love AT.

one time, the remote indicated a shift to ECO, but still felt like AT, right down to 0%... seemed it would keep going uphill, but I stopped at that point because I didn't want to blow it up or die.

Will it absolutely shut down before i cause any damage by pushing it too hard?

Also, does braking wear out or heat up components considerably more than riding? I can start high on the mountain and have options for low/high grade. so I can ride down with or without brakes, but could refill the tank multiple times on one ride and conceivably get 40+ miles. Is that kind of continuous strain bad on motors, controller, battery?

is braking intended for occasionally slowing or stopping, or for general speed control?

 

I weigh about 145 pounds and the board still fails to utilize GT for extended periods of time at 50%. I have the Carbon GT Street, so I assume voltage sag isn't really affected by weight.

Also, the remote showing 0% is actually quite inaccurate. Evolve set their voltage cutoff higher than the lowest recommended voltage of the cells (32v instead of 30v) so the remote shows 0% when the batteries still have some juice left in them. This is probably because they knew voltage sag was an issue. Basically, do not worry about damaging the batteries - the board will shut down long before there is any chance of damage occuring to the batteries.

About the braking, it shouldn't be an issue no matter how much you use it. Keep in mind that although braking will regenerate some batteries, you will have to accelerate more often - mitigating the effect unless most of your commute is downhill.

 

As ipark13p postet in the previous page, I too found out a diagram.

It shows the relationship percentage in display (main menu) to the Voltage in display (menu "more info") for my CARBON GT.

 

Incidentally here a further diagram.

Taken NOT UNDER LOAD, I was waiting after each new step (every 10Wh) 3 minutes before taking the corresponding percentage in Display.

 

Nice graphs.

The battery has protections to shut it down / cut off which protect it if it becomes overly discharged. But if you can prevent from running it down to 0% then that's always good for it. If its too much trouble, don't sweat it.

As for braking / regen, the only time regen can be damaging to the board / really the batteries is when you're at 100% charge or SOC and you go down a long hill. What you're doing its pumping more amps / voltage / charge into the battery, so essentially you're going over 42V which will damage the battery. Electric cars will prevent regen from activating until the SOC drops down to somewhere like 95%, this is to protect the battery from overcharging. Don't worry about heat or anything like that damaging from regen. Also if you're below 100% SOC you're fine with braking / regen.

 

This may have been posted previously, but well worth the read!
Explaining the Do's and Don'ts of Battery Charging - Battery University

in short:
1) use slow charger for everyday, fast charger only when needed.
2) Topping off affects battery life more than filling to 80%ish. I generally have 50+% available after my local rides, so for me, filling to 80% (~4.05V instead of 4.2V) might be better when i know I won't need the whole tank.

I think I read from Evolve that we should be filling to green after rides, but i'd love to hear other perspectives.

 

I have the bamboo gt and I have never recalled mine dropping from gt or fast down to eco.

 

You probably have the original remote that doesn't do that. They updated the remotes' firmware to knock down to ECO when sagging below 20% and made gearing safer.